Like many I spent yesterday morning reading everything I could about the 49 people who were killed at Pulse in Orlando, Florida. Reading about the grieving family members. Reading about the killer. Reading about gun violence. But after all the reading, after writing to my representatives, after donating a couple bucks to the families, still I felt empty. (Or too full.)
The language of fact is cold, and it left me numb. One benefit of following a lot of writers on social media is seeing the poems they post once they abandon their newspapers and turn to the thin volumes tucked away in their bookshelves. As local poet Heather McHugh wrote recently, “Poetry is language coming to its senses.” This small collection of short poems helped me come to mine.
On recovery: Ocean Vuong, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer
and failing.
The portion I quote here is the version included in Vuong’s incredible book of poems, Night Sky With Exit Wounds. The poem is ultimately about the struggle of dealing with the day-to-day intrusions of past traumas, but that line about gunfire comes to mind every time I read a headline about a mass shooting.
On gay clubs: Frank O’Hara, “At the Old Place”
Wrapped in Ashes’ arms I glide.
(It’s heaven!) Button lindys with me. (It’s
heaven!) Joe’s two-steps, too, are incredible,
and then a fast rhumba with Alvin, like skipping
on toothpicks.
O’Hara was a prolific gay poet and one of the central members of the so-called New York School. With its quick asides and chatty tone, the language in “At the Old Place” embodies the excitement of a night out with a fun crew, who just so happen to be some of the greatest artists and poets of the 20th century.
On empathy, being an ally, and gay clubs: Terrance Hayes, “At Pegasus”
How could I not find them
beautiful, the way they dive & spill
into each other,the way the dance floor
takes them,
wet & holy in its mouth.
I teach this poem in all classes about the structure of lyric poetry. Hayes expertly uses radiant images to staple together an erotic homosocial experience with a present moment of watching gay men dance in a club.
On sex: Audre Lorde, “Recreation”
Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.
In this poem, Lorde turns cold language and even cooler cliche abstractions (i.e. passion) into a body readers can feel. The internal/external tension in these last lines evoke the push and pull of sex. It’s one of those poems that puts you back into your body after spending a long time in a mind spiral.
On Grieving: Christopher Soto (Loma), “crush a pearl (its powder)”
but who smiles when the sky swallows its stars
The Feminist Wire published this poem of Soto’s and two others last year. They’re lyric meditations on queer love and death. These poems reminded me of the particularity of the lives of the people who were killed, and of how many people (friends, lovers, family) will be personally haunted by their loss.
On enduring love: Eileen Myles, “Peanut Butter”
I’m immoderately
in love with you,
knocked out by
all your new
white hairwhy shouldn’t
something
I have always
known be the
very best there
is.
One of Myles’s most popular works, “Peanut Butter” makes you feel like the only thing that matters in life is loving your partner. Despite its casual tone, the poem’s a crystal. Images and ideas at the beginning of the poem cycle through to the end of the poem but still seem fresh, just like feelings of love in a successful long-term relationship.
On mass shootings: Bob Hicok “In the Loop”
Because this was about nothing.
A boy who felt that he was nothing,
who erased and entered that erasure, and guns
that are good for nothing, and talk of guns
that is good for nothing, and spring…
Hicok teaches poetry and literature at Virginia Tech, which, back in 2007, was the site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history. Though this poem concerns the specifics of that incident, it also speaks deep truths about the nihilism embedded in all the political discourse that follows such massacres.
On indifference: W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
A “not unkind but not untrue” poem about the power of human selfishness. Self-interest is a wall against empathy, but it’s also a tool of self-preservation. Most of all, it’s a default setting we all have to adjust during moments of extreme tragedy.
On family: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s sonnet/acceptance speech at the Tony awards last night:
I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.
Timely, occasional poem. Brilliant considering the pressure he must have been under.
